(This commandline gives you compression settings that are stronger than -8 but still fully compliant. It also gives you the -5 option if you switch to "Low Quality". You could remove the --replay-gain and probably a few others.)

Please don't give someone who may not know any better the impression that there's any difference in encoding _quality_ between -8 (or "stronger") and any other FLAC _compression_ level. The quality is the same. And you might point out that the difference in these convoluted "high" compression settings and the default level of -5 is usually less than 1 or 2% of additional compression.

Please don't give someone who may not know any better the impression that there's any difference in encoding _quality_ between -8 (or "stronger") and any other FLAC _compression_ level. The quality is the same. And you might point out that the difference in these convoluted "high" compression settings and the default level of -5 is usually less than 1 or 2% of additional compression.

Respectfully, I don't believe I was giving that impression. "Higher quality" means better encoding quality for lossy codecs, and either better compression or faster encode/decode for lossless codecs. Anyone who understands the value of FLAC over, say, MP3, and can also use such a complex commandline in EAC, is very likely to understand that as well.

Besides, I had to give him the commandline I use verbatim, in order to guarantee that it would work.

Finally, I see no harm whatsoever in exposing a new user to more advanced options in FLAC. If they are interested in them, they are encouraged to read about them in the freely available FLAC documentation, or ask questions on these forums, and then try them out. They can then decide for themselves if the additional settings represent better "quality". If they are not interested in the additional settings, they are certainly welcome to ignore those settings.

That said, I agree a comment that the "strongest possible compliant" settings I provided only give (on average) 3% better compression than -5, and increase decode time, would have been warranted.